Sahih Muslim

Sahih Muslim (Arabic صحيح مسلم) is the one of the six canonical hadith collections considered authentic by the Sunnis. It is the second most authentic hadith collection after the Sahih Bukhari and is highly acclaimed by Sunnis and was collected by a Persian scholar named Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj.

The collector, Muslim was born in 202 A.H. in Nishapur, Iran into a Persian family (817/818CE) and died in 261AH (874/875CE) also in Nishapur. He traveled widely to gather his collection of ahadith (plural of hadith), including to Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Egypt. Out of 300000 hadith which he evaluated, approximately 4000 were extracted for inclusion into his collection based on stringent acceptance criteria. Each report in his collection was checked and the veracity of the chain of reporters was painstakingly established. Sunni Muslims consider it the second most authentic hadith collection, after Sahih Bukhari. Sahih Muslim is divided into 43 books,containing a total of 7190 narrations. However, it is important to realize that Imam Muslim never claimed to collect all authentic traditions as his goal was to collect only traditions that all Muslims should agree on about accuracy.

According to Munthiri, there are a total of 2200 hadiths (without repetition) in Sahih Muslim. According to Muhammad Amin, there are 1400 authentic hadiths that are reported in other books, mainly the six canonical hadith collections.